In honor of the 100th birthday of the emergence of the Dada movement, we are sharing the unique artist book created by Rolf Lock embodying Hugo Ball’s Karawane. In full leather boards, the exquisite hand illustration and lettering was executed on sandpaper…because…it was. It is housed, as one would expect, in an olive wood camel, the book at rest forming its hump…because…it is.

Accordion fold of sandpaper in a handmade full leather binding by Ingela Dieric (rust-red oasis goatskin leather with polychrome inlay, hand gilding and aeg. The text of Hugo Ball poem in serpentine lines of equal calligraphy the track of a caravan and ornamented with hand-painted motifs desert. Housed in a handmade wooden camel on wheels of burl wood.

“In 1916, Hugo Ball created the Dada Manifesto, making a political statement about his views on the terrible state of society and acknowledging his dislike for philosophies in the past claiming to possess the ultimate Truth. The same year as the Manifesto, in 1916, Ball wrote his poem “Karawane,” which is a poem consisting of nonsensical words. The meaning however resides in its meaninglessness, reflecting the chief principle behind Dadaism.”